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We’ve had Jesse since he was a young tearaway that we rescued from the RSCPA over Christmas 1995 – that’s 15 years ago. He was a year old then, so he’s just a bit over 16 years old.

About 2 years ago he had a kidney pancreas issue, but we got that under control and he’s been doing ok, but a few months ago he started to struggle again. He’s been getting pretty lethargic. We took him to the vet a few weeks ago and based on what we thought was going on he was put on a low dose of arthritis medication. That hasn’t helped much, so he went to the vet again yesterday and some blood tests were done.

The results were not good at all: his kidneys have failed, and we’ve got to put him down.

We’re obviously pretty sad about this. He’s been with us for a long time – 3/4 of the time Lisa and I have been together Jess has been part of our lives. Both kids have grown up with him; they don’t know anything other than Jess being part of the family. The big girl is taking it pretty hard; she’s quite upset about it. It’s not easy to explain death to a 7 year old.

We’ve got lots of really good memories of Jesse; things that annoyed us at the time are just fun to look back at now. The way he used to pull all the washing off the line until we fixed that (hint: plastic shopping bag half full of water). The time Lisa and I were walking into Box Hill from our house in Surrey Hills and Jess and Zak ran either side of Lisa and the lead went across the back of her knees and dropped her like a sack of potatoes. The trip we did to Uluru with Jess and Zak in tow.

When Zak was put down we had him cremated. We’ve got his ashes in a wooden box; I think we’ll bury that with Jess. They were good mates.

Update: Jesse was put down just after 1pm yesterday.